Strategic Cultures and Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

Reflecting the culturalist turn in security studies, this special issue shows how one of the most powerful tools of security studies illuminates the origins and implications of the region's difficult issues, from the rise of China and the American pivot, to the shifting calculations of other regional actors. Strategic culture sometimes challenges and always enriches prevailing neorealist presumptions about the region. It provides a bridge between material and ideational explanations of state behaviour and helps to capture the tension between neoclassical realist and constructivist approaches. The case studies survey the role of strategic culture in the behaviours of Australia, China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and the United States. They show the contrast between structural expectations and cultural predispositions as realist geopolitical security threats and opportunities interact with domestic elite and popular interpretation of historical narratives and distinctive political-military cultures to influence security policies. The concluding retrospective article devotes special attention to methodological issues at the heart of strategic cultural studies, as well as how culture may impact the potential for future conflict or cooperation in the region. The result is a body of work that helps deepen our understanding of strategic cultures in comparative perspective and enrich security studies. As disputes intensify over territory and resources, as regional militaries develop and leaders adjust their strategic calculus and defence commitments, the dovetailing of culture and politics in the Asia-Pacific shows through.

As president I have, therefore, made a deliberate and strategic decision: as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future … So, let there be no doubt: in the Asia-Pacific in the 21st century, the United States of America is all in.

Barack Obama¹

China will stick to the road of peaceful development but never give up our legitimate rights and never sacrifice our national core interests … No country should presume that we will engage in trade involving our core interests or that we will swallow the bitter fruit of harming our sovereignty, security or development interests.

Xi Jinping²

The security architecture of the Asia-Pacific region is in the process of a profound transformation … As the region adapts to the new strategic circumstances and policy-makers attempt to construct new, multilateral arrangements and structures for enhancing security cooperation, there is a need to confront cultural legacies which both constrain some possibilities and suggest more positive avenues for policy making.

Desmond Ball³

I am pleased to introduce this special issue of Contemporary Security Policy­, which features an original collection of articles on strategic cultures in the Asia-Pacific. This offers a timely account of strategic cultures in conjunction with the rise of the region to new prominence in world politics and the emergence of more complex security challenges. Globalization, the ascendance of China, and North Korean nuclear ambitions (to name but a few factors) have impacted many countries in the Asia-Pacific in the past decade. President Obama revived American engagement, calling the region a top priority for national security policy. The United States stepped up joint military exercises and training with allies, and negotiations regarding future basing and strategic partnerships.

As tensions increase, many governments in the region have entered into debates about identity, tradition, and security policy choices. Contributors to this special issue argue that while international relations theories tend to interpret such developments broadly as structural transformations, strategic culture adds a valuable perspective to understand security policy choices taken by states in the region over the past decade. Articles address theory and policy implications of different national identity conceptions. They also describe the indigenous development of national strategic cultures, critical historical perspectives, the various actors and institutions that have shaped strategic cultures, and the mirroring effects on cultures when dealing with regional security partners and rivals. Several articles also explore epistemological and methodological questions related to strategic culture, and draw insights from the comparative approach of this study.

This project follows in the tradition of other significant works on comparative strategic cultures, most notably Desmond Ball's comparative project at the Australian National University and the comprehensive study edited by Ken Booth and Russell Trood.⁴ Indeed, we adopt the basic definition developed by Alan Macmillan, Booth, and Trood – strategic culture as ‘a distinctive and lasting set of beliefs, values and habits regarding the threat and use of force, which have their roots in such fundamental influences as geopolitical setting, history and political culture’ – as a common foundation for this new project.⁵ Other scholars have also written independent studies of Asian countries' ways of war and their link to issues such as WMD policy and territorial disputes.⁶ Comparative strategic culture projects focused on other regions of the world, such as the European security and defence identity debates, and Latin American foreign and security policies, have also been influential in this study.⁷

At the same time, we seek to extend on these works in several ways. First, articles incorporate advances in recent scholarship to interpret security policy outcomes through the lens of strategic culture. As Peter Schmidt and Benjamin Zyla have argued, strategic culture appears to offer a powerful explanatory tool to explore these dynamics because it ‘allows conceptual and theoretical elasticity, and thus promises to be inclusive of a variety of scholars and theoretical traditions in international relations’.⁸ Authors identify primary keepers of a nation's strategic culture (including the role of strategic subcultures), explore the impact of strategic culture on security policy behaviour, and address questions of continuity versus change. Second, because the notion of strategic culture is sometimes invoked as shorthand and dismissed as deterministic, this project sets out to capture the reflexive ways behaviours can be linked to beliefs and ideas about when, where, and how countries might consider actions including the use of military force.⁹ Mindful of warnings that strategic cultural studies with disparate definitions and epistemologies could muddy the intellectual waters, this study highlights areas where it may provide added value, or an explicative understanding of select Asia-Pacific case studies.¹⁰ Third, articles address a fascinating range of strategic cultures in both leading and emerging players in the region, including Australia, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Japan, and the United States. These were selected as countries facing similar security dynamics in the 21st century, yet representative of a range of competing historical narratives, experiences, backgrounds, and traditions.¹¹

A comparison of these articles suggests the likelihood of greater conflict in the region as a function of deep and serious socio-cultural animosities and differences, the relatively narrow set of keepers of strategic culture in many of these societies, the importance of strategic subcultures, and the complexity of modern challenges these countries face. The authors frame developments in the region as much more complex than simply balancing or bandwagoning between China and the United States, however. They contend that conflicts are likely between and among great powers (who sometimes may be fooling themselves and their adversaries, according to our authors), middle powers, and small powers in the region. Indeed, to some degree, these articles suggest that despite the American pivot to Asia, smaller powers in the region are pursuing their own determined foreign and security policy paths. They face serious internal divisions over questions of the use of force, humanitarian intervention, immigration crises, and terrorism in their own backyards. Attention to the multiple actors, conditions, and ideational constructs at work yields a richer scholarly understanding of the complicated paths of Asian security policies.

Geopolitics and the Changing Asia-Pacific

This project explores origins, patterns, and implications of the changing security dynamics in the Asia-Pacific through the lens of strategic culture.¹² Because strategic culture is commonly compared with neorealism, and because rationalist interpretations of developments in the region abound, a brief survey of material considerations ‘on the ground’ seems in order.¹³

Policymakers in the Asia-Pacific region face numerous challenges and opportunities today. For instance, globalization has drawn a number of powers into the region. The United States is working to foster a new Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade and investment platform to include major economies of the region that would counter Chinese influence in ASEAN. In the realm of military/security affairs, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense stated in its 2013 White Paper that the country must address ‘multiple and complicated security threats’.¹⁴ One of the most common interpretations of developments in the region in the past decade is that it is undergoing structural transformation with predictable outcomes.¹⁵ For example, Randall Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu argue that ‘[t]he dramatic rise of China and India among others has set the stage for a fundamental rethinking of world politics in an age of the waning dominance of US power’.¹⁶ At the same time, however, Chinese leaders appear to have differing interpretations of the notion of hegemony, as well as its implications for interstate relationships. In particular, they puzzle over American commitments to the region and ‘whether the United States intends to use its power to help or hurt China’.¹⁷

These are real questions given the Obama administration's own claim to the mantle of Pacific power and the introduction of its strategy of an Asia pivot in 2011. At the time of writing, the declared change in American policy is still in its infancy, but it suggests enhanced capabilities and engagement with the region. In a speech to the Australian Parliament, Obama described the Asia-Pacific as a ‘top priority’, explaining that the United States would ‘play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future’.¹⁸ Indeed, the United States appeared to push back against Chinese assertiveness and challenges to international laws and norms.¹⁹ The United States has strengthened relationships with rising partners in the region. It formally joined the East Asia Summit and has attempted to steer the organization towards a focus on maritime security issues; it carried out its first joint naval training operation with Vietnam since the Vietnam War. The United States also signed a strategic framework agreement with Singapore, has begun to train Cambodian forces in counter-insurgency, plans to substantially increase its military presence in the Philippines, and is expanding ties with Myanmar. Experts contend, ‘After a decade in which American attention and treasure were drawn to the Middle East and South Asia, the Obama administration's new emphasis on the Asia-Pacific represents a bold strategic choice that could animate American national security policy for years to come’.²⁰

There are also significant tensions over territory (such as the Senkaku/Diaoyutai and Spratly Islands disputes) and resources today.²¹ Territorial claims are cross-cutting and incendiary: the Spratly Islands, a rugged chain of reefs and islets spread across more than 100,000 square miles in the South China Sea, are claimed by China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China also claims much of the South China Sea as its own, from the mainland out to the coastlines of many countries bordering the sea, and in late 2013 Beijing declared a Special Air Defense Zone hundreds of miles into the East China Sea. Meanwhile, Vietnam claims the Paracel Islands, which China seized in 1974. Not only does the region have major shipping lanes for maritime transit and large fisheries, but large natural gas and oil deposits have been discovered in the seabed around the Spratlys. Resource disputes have intensified between China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

Meanwhile, potential economic opportunities in the region abound. Member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum make up some 40 per cent of global population, 55 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP), and nearly 45 per cent of global trade. Trade within APEC ‘has grown nearly sevenfold since 1989, topping USD 11 trillion in 2011’.²² Technology and trade have contributed to developments in the fastest growing economic region in the world, with many countries growing at more than seven per cent per annum. By 2050, experts estimate that Asia will comprise half of global GDP. East Asia has become a lucrative market and an important destination, as well as a source of direct investment for the United States, and Southeast Asia has seen greater stabilization and growth. China clearly remains at the centre of these developments, pursuing a self-proclaimed peaceful rise of engagement. It appears to be attaining economic, political, and military leverage over its neighbours in the process, and it enjoys significant influence in terms of both hard and soft power. Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell argue that China ‘has become one of a small number of countries that have significant national interests in every part of the world and that command the attention, whether willingly or grudgingly, of every other country and every international organization’.²³ Capturing the spirit of his country's regional influence, President Xi Jinping stated, ‘China cannot develop in isolation of the Asia-Pacific, and the Asia-Pacific cannot prosper without China’.²⁴

While material/security interpretations help to frame some challenges and choices that face countries in the region today, their security policy behaviours have been more complex and multi-layered.²⁵ For example, Japan's strategic culture of anti-militarism seemed to limit its activism in the region, and today its leaders in Japan are caught up in a fascinating debate about revising Article 9 of the Constitution, which formally renounces war as a sovereign right. The Philippines government elite confronts limited projection capabilities that have been constrained by a prevailing strategic cultural focus on counter-insurgency and asymmetric warfare (and shaped by limited resources for conventional defence). South Korea's history appears to cast a long shadow on its development of modern strategic orientation. At the same time, advances in multilateral defence coordination – in the creation of the Shangri-La Dialogue (2002), the inauguration of the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meetings, and other ASEAN regional forums – appear to be greatly motivated by elite beliefs in the intangible, potential value of the exchange.²⁶ Some experts also suggest that great power tensions, including a perceived rise in Chinese bellicosity, may actually reflect internal weakness from years of financial crisis and social unrest. Thus, countries throughout the region appear to be pursuing security policy paths that best reflect a synthesis of material and ideational pressures.²⁷

Strategic Cultural Theory and Issue Themes

Articles in this collection offer a rich exploration of the actors, factors, norms, and ideas that impact security policy development in select country cases. They examine the historical background of country strategic cultures in terms of geography and resources, history, and conflict experiences. They then identify major actors and institutions that serve as ‘keepers’ of strategic culture or guide the development of cultural narratives on security in the country. In some cases, this includes exploration of the national security framework ‘strategic subcultures’. Next, they explore geostrategic changes in the Asia-Pacific in the past decade and how they have been interpreted in country cases through the lens of strategic culture. This draws particular attention to the question of continuity versus change. A concluding article addresses methodological issues related to establishing systematic and generalizable approaches for comparative study and identifies new avenues for research on strategic culture in the Asia-Pacific and beyond.

Theoretical Foundations

The foundation for modern strategic culture studies lies in diplomatic and military history, sociology, and political culture.²⁸ National character studies of the 1940s and 1950s were some of the first modern attempts to define connections between culture (including the roots of a nation's character found in language, religion, customs, socialization, and the interpretation of common memories) and state behaviour, based primarily on anthropological models.²⁹ These studies became popular tools for threat assessment during World War II, in spite of lingering concerns about reification of culture and stereotyping.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined culture as ‘an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life’.³⁰ In 1977, Jack Snyder extended these ideas to establish a first generation of theories of strategic culture to interpret Soviet nuclear strategy. Snyder's work, which challenged prevailing realist models, was influenced greatly by studies of military affairs, including Basil Liddell Hart's classic, The British Way in Warfare (1932) and Russell F. Weigley's The American Way of War (1973). Snyder suggested that elites articulate a unique strategic culture related to security-military affairs that is a wider manifestation of public opinion, socialized into a distinctive, semi-permanent mode of strategic thinking.³¹ Snyder applied his strategic cultural framework to interpret the development of Soviet and American nuclear doctrines as products of different organizational, historical, and political contexts, along with technological constraints. He predicted that the Soviet military exhibited a preference for the pre-emptive, offensive use of force, rooted in a Russian history of insecurity and authoritarian control.

Subsequent work on strategic culture continued to explore the ideational foundations of nuclear strategy and superpower relations. Ken Booth defined strategic culture as ‘a nation's traditions, values, attitudes, patterns of behavior, habits, symbols, achievements and particular ways of adapting to the environment and solving problems with respect to the threat and use of force’.³² Colin Gray also suggested that distinctive national styles, with ‘deep roots within a particular stream of historical experience’, characterized strategic development in countries like the United States and the Soviet Union. To Gray, strategic culture ‘provides the milieu within which strategy is debated’, and represents a semi-permanent influence on security policy.³³

Strategic culture was revived in a third generation of work in the 1990s, this time as a function of a new search for explanatory theory after the end of the Cold War, a renewal of culturalist theory traditions, and the rise of constructivism. Alastair Iain Johnston's Cultural Realism set out to investigate the existence and character of Chinese strategic culture and causal linkages to the use of military force against external threats. Johnston defined strategic culture as an ‘ideational milieu that limits behavioral choices’, from which ‘one could derive specific predictions about strategic choice’.³⁴ Other works at the intersection of constructivism and culturalism helped to set the stage for further advancement of the field.³⁵ Valerie Hudson says that culture provides ‘the elements of grammar that define the situation, that reveal motives and that set forth a strategy for success’.³⁶ More recently K.P. O'Reilly examined the question of whether elite beliefs reflect internalized national strategic cultures, with particular attention to the development of the American ‘rogue doctrine’. He concluded that evidence from recent American presidents suggests ‘the cultural template does sway leaders' strategic choices'.³⁷ John Glenn described advances in four categories of scholarship: epiphenomenal strategic cultural studies, conventional constructivist strategic cultural models, post-structuralist strategic culture, and interpretivist strategic cultural studies.³⁸

Finally, recent concentrated research initiatives suggest a new wave of scholarly interest in the power of culture as an explanatory variable. For example, Utah State University and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency sponsored a series of comparative strategic cultures studies, with special attention to policies on weapons of mass destruction.³⁹ At around the same time, the US Army War College adopted a new model for regional studies courses, the Analytical Cultural Framework for Strategy and Policy (ACFSP).⁴⁰ Similar curricular innovations have been developed at numerous institutions in the past decade, including the National Defense University, Florida International University, Missouri State University, the Air Force Academy, and the US Joint Special Operations University. These projects have also sponsored advanced research projects exploring the utility of strategic cultural models in studies of counter-terrorism, deterrence, and foreign policy decision making.⁴¹

Sources of Strategic Culture

Theories of strategic culture recognize that a number of factors may shape a country's political-military culture. Case studies in this collection begin with a background overview of a country's strategic culture, including discussions of key factors that have shaped their trajectories over time.⁴² First and foremost, the articles recognize the importance of geopolitical considerations and structural pressures on state behaviour. Such an approach captures major developments and challenges that impact country security policy development. It also provides a useful bridge between material and ideational explanations of state behaviour and helps to capture the tension between neoclassical realist and constructivist approaches.

Critical contexts including geography, climate, and resources may also impact security policy development. For example, geographical circumstance may be one key to understanding why some countries rather than others adopt particular strategic policies. Geography and a legacy of conflict on the Korean peninsula have clearly had a powerful impact on South Korea's strategic culture. States with multiple borders may be confronted by numerous security dilemmas, as in the case of countries such as Thailand, Myanmar, and China. The Philippines archipelago, consisting of more than 7,000 islands, has made it geographically quite vulnerable to potential threats from great powers. Ensuring access to vital resources is also critical to strategy, an increasingly serious concern for nearly all nations of the Asia-Pacific region. Dominant narratives of historical experiences or ‘roles’ may also impact security policy behaviour. According to Marijke Breuning, roles are an extension of cultural axiomatic beliefs regarding the state's relation to the international environment (actor versus subject orientation), the nature of the international environment (universalistic versus particularistic worldview), and understandings of rules of behaviour (intent-based versus results-oriented).⁴³

Another source of strategic culture is the nature of a country's political structure and defence organizations. Some countries adopt a broadly Western liberal democratic style of government, while others do not. Some are considered mature democracies while others are undergoing democratic transformations. Where the latter are concerned, there may be cultural variables such as tribal, religious, or ethnic allegiances that operate within and across territorial boundaries, which determine the pace and depth of consolidation. Similarly, many regard defence organizations as being critical to strategic cultures but differ over the precise impact they have. Military doctrines, civil–military relations, and procurement practices may also represent important dimensions of strategic culture.⁴⁴

Myths and symbols are considered to be part of all cultural groupings and may act as a stabilizing or destabilizing factor in the evolution of strategic cultural identities. This can refer to a body of beliefs that express the fundamental, largely unconscious or assumed political values of a society – in short, as forms of expression of ideology.⁴⁵ Myths typically represent fascinating blends of fact and fiction. In the most extreme example, Kim Il-Sung's articulation of a constructed North Korean political philosophy of juche in 1972 became a cornerstone of state ideology. Although derided by outsiders as a distortion of Marxist-Leninist principles, Kim said that juche meant ‘being the master of revolution and reconstruction in one's own country. This means holding fast to an independent position, rejecting dependence on others, using one's own brains, believing in one's own strength, displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance, and thus solving one's own problems for oneself on one's own responsibility under all circumstances’.⁴⁶ The resulting four decades of North Korean strategic behaviour have reflected both self-reliance and self-denial in the face of numerous challenges. Symbols act as ‘socially recognized objects of more or less common understanding’ and ‘provide a cultural community with stable points of reference for strategic thought and action’.⁴⁷ China's Forbidden City and Great Wall, Australia's Diggers, and monuments to past American engagements in the Asia-Pacific all serve to remind nations of the importance of political and security commitments. Finally, traditional analyses of peace and conflict have also long pointed to the influence of key texts as formative throughout history and in different cultural settings.⁴⁸

Who Are the Keepers of Culture?

Case studies in this collection also identify and discuss the major actors and institutions that serve as keepers of strategic culture in different countries. Articles explore which leaders, coalitions, or major political or military institutions have been the most prominent purveyors of the common cultural narrative in recent decades. They also address relative degrees of agreement or division over the overarching national security framework of the nation.

How are the shared assumptions and decision rules of strategic culture maintained, and by whom? Most scholars prefer descriptions of political and strategic cultures as the ‘property of collectivities rather than simply of the individuals that constitute them’.⁴⁹ But if political culture is truly manifest in cognitive, evaluative, and expressive dimensions, then it is conceivable that actors who carry those values might be identified. In fact, various political leaders and institutions are engaged in historical interpretation and development of the foreign policy path. This, in turn, prompts coalition- and consensus-building efforts by specific political players.⁵⁰ Thomas Berger suggests that political culture can only be understood as a combination of norms and political institutions that ‘exist in an interdependent relationship’.⁵¹

Elites are key players in shaping the common historical narrative. While there is a general consensus in the literature that elites are cognitively predisposed to maintain the status quo, some scholars suggest greater agency. Berger's work on policy discourse recognizes the fact that strategic culture is best characterized as a ‘negotiated reality’ among elites. Leaders pay respect to deeply held convictions such as multilateralism and historical responsibility, but they may also choose when and where to stake claims of strategic cultural traditions; they decide whether and how to consciously move beyond previous boundaries of acceptability in foreign policy behaviour. Ultimately, elite behaviour may be more consistent with the assertion that leaders are strategic ‘users of culture’ who ‘redefine the limits of the possible’ in key foreign and security policy discourses.⁵²

Political institutions – including parties and domestic coalitions – also have a significant impact on foreign policy behaviour. The organizational culture literature, for example, suggests that state behaviour is a function of specific institutional orientations. Studies of Japanese and German foreign policy decisions in the 1990s argue that there are enduring institutional manifestations of strategic culture. But the keepers of the culture may not be military bureaucracies. In Japan, political institutions from the Diet to the Liberal Democratic Party to the Self-Defense Forces traditionally have shared commitments to a foreign policy of restraint. In other Asian countries, families and business groups that steer foreign and trade ministries appear also to dominate the discourse on political-military affairs. Whether or not military bureaucracies are the most common keepers of strategic culture around the world, it remains the case that the influence of organizational culture on state behaviour is mediated by other institutions and by the policymaking process in democratic states.

A Strategic Cultural Lens on Security Policy Development

Next, country case studies develop examples of links between strategic culture and security policy behaviours, with characterizations of perceptions of threats and opportunities, actions and restraint, conditioned by cultural perspectives. Articles devote special attention to choices regarding the use of military force, multilateral cooperation, and social and economic engagement with regional partners.

Explorations of the impact of cultural lenses on security policy development relate well to the theoretical question of continuity versus change (that is, to what degree has strategic culture been similar or different?). For example, the theme of continuity dominates scholarship in this area, from Snyder's characterization of strategic culture as ‘semi-permanent’ to Gray's description of national styles rooted in historical experience. More recent work also emphasizes strategic cultural continuity, where the lens acts as a constraint on foreign and security policy changes that might be rationally expected in a changed system. For instance, Berger focuses on ‘antimilitarist political-military cultures’ to explain Japanese and German foreign policies of restraint in the post-Cold War era.⁵³ Cultural beliefs and values act as a distinct national lens to shape perceptions of events and even channel possible societal responses, he argues. To Duffield, ‘[t]he overall effect of national security culture is to predispose societies in general and political elites in particular toward certain actions and policies over others. Some options will simply not be imagined … some are more likely to be rejected as inappropriate or ineffective than others’.⁵⁴

Theorists contend that strategic culture may be resistant to change for several reasons. First, existing political cultural content is often widely shared, so ‘alternative sets of ideas are relatively few and enjoy little support within the society, thus limiting the possibility that a given political culture might be readily supplanted’.⁵⁵ This argument is echoed by Jeffrey Legro, who believes that political culture is a collective property ‘generally not reducible to individuals’.⁵⁶ Lucian Pye terms political culture the ‘manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimension of politics … the product of both the collective history of a political system and the life histories of the members of that system’.⁵⁷ Second, strategic culture may become institutionalized in bureaucratic agencies over time.⁵⁸ Sentiments may be reinforced in countries through a process of legitimated compromises, allowing core principles to remain much the same for decades; they lend resiliency to cultural frames.

Conversely, some experts have begun to reflect on the potential for dynamism in strategic culture. In the past two decades, a new generation of scholarly work, informed by constructivism, has reasserted the utility of cultural interpretations and helped to open the model to change.⁵⁹ Theoretical work on strategic culture, domestic structures, and organizational culture has intersected ever more frequently with the rise of constructivism.⁶⁰ According to Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, and Stephen Krasner, constructivism recognizes the importance of ‘inter-subjective structures that give the material world meaning’, including norms, culture, identity, and ideas on state behaviour or on international relations more generally.⁶¹ Hudson states that constructivism ‘views culture as an evolving system of shared meaning that governs perceptions, communications, and actions … in both the short and long term’.⁶² Glenn takes a broader approach to the question, maintaining that different generations of scholarship on strategic culture each allow for a measure of dynamism.⁶³

Regional Cooperation: An Emerging Asia-Pacific Security Identity?

Several articles in this collection also link a culturalist model to the potential for the emergence of an Asia-Pacific regional strategic cultural identity. They address questions of what regional political institutions have the potential for promoting security policy coordination, whether great powers in the region are truly interested in achieving coordinated security policies, and how distinct cultures and national interests may act as an impediment to regional cooperation. They reflect on the origins and experiences of organizations like ASEAN and South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), as well as the potential for development of the East Asia Summit platform and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, among other regional initiatives.⁶⁴

Optimists contend that there has been progress in achieving a measure of cooperation in the region. Michael Green and Bates Gill have noted, ‘Whether Asia's future is characterized by cooperation or confrontation will be determined in large part by the region's ability to construct effective multilateral institutions for integration, collaboration, and cooperative problem solving’. They recognize an ‘evolving architecture’ of multilateralism in the region, but conclude that it remains an open question whether this is moving towards more holistic problem solving or exclusive bilateral and ad hoc mini-lateral arrangements.⁶⁵ Challenges to cooperation include problems of ceding sovereignty, the freedom of action of a collective, energy security, market competition, resources, and nationalism. Their collection explores a range of perspectives among states, including Chinese mixed sentiments towards an East Asian community and concern regarding engagement in the region, diverse country perspectives on the emerging security architecture, and traditional and non-traditional security concerns.⁶⁶ Regional policy coordination would have to effectively manage a diversity of perspectives while at the same time tackling issues ranging from nuclear missiles in North Korea to fishing in the South China Sea, to irregular migration patterns in the region. Thus, important questions remain about both the presumed architects and the potential architecture of an Asia-Pacific security community.

The European Union may serve as an interesting institutional setting for purposes of comparison.⁶⁷ After decades of negotiation and fitful attempts at true military coordination, the EU formalized a common European Security Strategy (ESS) for the first time in its history in December 2003. Some hailed the achievement as marking a common European strategic culture, but others have continued to question whether the EU will ever be capable of forging a bond of common threat perceptions and interests. Optimists such as Paul Cornish and Geoffrey Edwards contend that ‘there are signs that a European strategic culture is already developing through a socialization process’. The define it simply as ‘the institutional confidence and processes to manage and deploy military force as part of the accepted range of legitimate and effective policy instruments’.⁶⁸ To Christoph Meyer, the European Council vote on ESS in December 2003 provided a necessary ‘strategic concept’ around which to focus attention and resources. This could serve as the foundation for a process of convergence towards a truly European strategic culture; countries could achieve ‘ideational and cognitive homogeneity concerning security and defence policies’.⁶⁹ However, others maintain that Europe lacks both the capabilities and the will to attain true coordination. Europeans disagree over threat perception and the proper responses to perceived threats, and they themselves question whether the EU can be an effective actor in the face of serious crises.

Scholars have explored the necessary or sufficient conditions for a process of convergence towards regional strategic cultures. To achieve a level of coordination comparable to the European Security and Defence Identity, for example, experts contend that it will be necessary for elites in the Asia-Pacific to demonstrate much more concerted commitment and effort.⁷⁰ Greater military organizational cultural alignments and joint defence training and coordination would be necessary, but not sufficient to achieve some objectives. Leaders must also work to establish ‘the institutional confidence and processes to manage and deploy military force as part of the accepted range of legitimate and effective policy instruments’.⁷¹ Scholarly work on European and African security policy coordination has also drawn from constructivism to consider the potential for a sort of normative convergence – the development of a common security culture or strategic culture that would capture and draw upon similar norms, ideas, and practices regarding the legitimate use of force.⁷² Even if areas of agreement can be identified among countries in either region, substantial questions may remain regarding the means and ends of security cooperation.⁷³

Methodological Issues

This project also sets out to highlight some of the methodological challenges in studies of strategic culture and make the case for more systematic and generalizable approaches for comparative study. Articles reference what has now become a rather ‘traditional’ debate in this non-traditional area of investigation over how best to define strategic culture. For decades, scholars have disagreed over whether strategic culture should be viewed as an independent variable or a factor inextricably linked with behaviour.⁷⁴ Much of this contestation ‘centres on the meaning and applicability of the concept and its epistemological implications for how we analyze state behaviour’.⁷⁵ In first-generation research, Snyder defined strategic culture as ‘a set of semi-permanent elite beliefs, attitudes, and behavior patterns socialized into a distinctive mode of thought’.⁷⁶ Gray advanced an interpretivist definition of strategic culture as ‘socially transmitted ideas, attitudes and traditions, habits of mind and preferred methods of operation that are more or less specific to a particular geographically based security community that has a necessarily unique historical experience’.⁷⁷ Years later, Johnston cast strategic culture in a more positivist light as ‘an ideational milieu which limits behavior choices’ and a set of ‘shared assumptions and decision rules that impose a degree of order on individual and group conceptions of their relationship to their social, organizational or political environment’.⁷⁸

A second methodological question raised by several of these articles relates to strategic subcultures. Recognizing a multiplicity of key players opens the interpretive frame fairly widely and brings up issues of measurement, contestation, and understanding. Thus, while recognizing that subcultures might exist, Johnston and other positivists adopted a working assumption that ‘there is a generally dominant culture whose holders are interested in preserving the status quo’.⁷⁹ In contrast, more contemporary studies focus on the existence of multiple, often competing strategic subcultures which ‘each present a different interpretation of a state's international social/cultural context – who a state's “friends” and “foes” are – which in turn affects how that state interprets the material variables – geography, relative power, technological change, etc. – relevant to strategic decision-making’.⁸⁰ These different subcultures may often be identified by the outspoken position of their leaders, who articulate prevailing attitudes regarding issues of identity, challenges, traditions, and problems facing the state. Ultimately, Bloomfield argues, strategic subcultures ‘contain an integrated mix of social/cultural and material/technical concepts. These are then promoted by various domestic groups competing against one another to offer the “most accurate” interpretation of their state's international context’.⁸¹

Third, case studies highlight methodological questions related to units of analysis and policy relevance. Christopher Twomey maintains that strategic culture has the potential to be of value, but only if it can provide a more focused map of ‘how different national cultures think about the use of force, how they make war, etc.’⁸² More precise indicators (or units of analysis) of strategic culture may be found in elite discourse and military-organizational cultures. For example, Walter Russell Mead's Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (2001) provides insight into the role of elite discourse. He argues that there have been at least four cultural strands that have impacted American thinking on grand strategy, including assessments of the merits of employing force and other engagements in international affairs. For example, Jacksonian interventionists are more inclined to use military force to achieve objectives, fostering a tradition of ‘robust bellicosity’ in strategic behaviour.⁸³ Lantis explored the critical role of elites as ‘norm stewards’ who define state commitments and responsibilities vis-à-vis international standards.⁸⁴ Jeffrey Legro and Elizabeth Kier examined ways in which specific military-organizational cultures shape appropriate military strategy.⁸⁵ Twomey examines how military doctrines shape perceptions of military threats and assessment of the military balance in Sino-American and Arab-Israeli conflicts.⁸⁶ David Kang recognizes ways in which military-organizational cultures may actually engender a sense of comfort among elites in South Korea and Vietnam regarding Chinese leadership of the Asian international system.⁸⁷

The contributions here provide somewhat different perspectives on these questions, yet strive to adhere to a somewhat standard set of categories to examine the history and agents of strategic culture (and strategic subcultures) as well as articulate the impact of strategic culture on security policy behaviour. Articles explore critical questions of identity and the social transmission of cultural frames that shape the set of policy options under consideration at any given time. By touching on the interactions between agents and ideational and material factors, they offer new insights on the prospects for cooperation and conflict in the Asia-Pacific region over the coming decades.

Preview

Differences in approaches to the study of strategic cultures across the generations have produced fascinating debates that go to the heart of our enterprise. But these may also have had the unintended effect of stymying some forward progress in the discipline. Whether or not scholars may some day achieve a Popperian understanding of strategic culture is beyond the scope of this study. Rather, most articles here seek a comfortable middle ground that explores strategic cultural models to provide a value-added, ‘explicative understanding’ of strategic behaviour.⁸⁸ Short of claiming the predictive power of a positivist epistemology – and recognizing that this project is a study of change as much as continuity – we set out to provide a measure of explanation of state behaviours as relates to contemporary strategic analysis. Authors also recognize that strategic behaviour creates a feedback loop that in turn impacts both ideational and material factors, or at least causes changes in the nature or meaning of those factors.

Cases selected for inclusion in this study reflect a wide range of actors, factors, and conditions at work. It frames the exploration of regional dynamics with a focus on the two most powerful states with concerns in the Asia-Pacific: China and the United States. Essays also examine links between strategic cultures and behaviours of middle and smaller powers in the region, raising a diverse set of dynamics at work that reflect authoritarian and democratic traditions, as well as a diverse range of historical experiences. In sum, the contributions to this collection reflect different strategic cultures confronting similar challenges in regional security dynamics, with resulting patterns highlighting interesting implications for policy and theory development.

In their exploration of Australian strategic culture, Alex Burns and Ben Eltham examine the country's strategic cultural status as a middle power with a realist defence policy, paying special attention to elite discourse, military service cultures, and a regional focus. They contend that Australia's strategic culture has unresolved tensions due to the lack of an overarching national security framework, and policymaking constraints at two interlocking levels: cultural worldviews and institutional design that affects strategy formulation and resource allocation. The cultural constraints include confusion over national security policy, the prevalence of neorealist strategic studies, the Defence Department's dominant role in formulating strategic doctrines, and problematic experiences with Asian ‘regional engagement’ and the Pacific Islands. The article also examines possibilities for continuity and change in Australian strategic culture in the context of the release of the 2012 Gillard government's Australia in the Asian Century White Paper.

Andrew Scobell argues that dramatic recent developments in the Asia-Pacific security environment raise questions about true Chinese motivations and interests. Scobell emphasizes ways in which culture has a critical influence in China's strategic thought and disposition. A major perceptual problem is mirror-imaging, when analysts construct understandings of their country's own strategic culture based on what they perceive to be the strategic cultures of other major powers. This fosters a distorted lens that, when empowered by national myths, may be more likely to lead to conflict. Scobell concludes that these dynamics may fuel future tensions in the region, not only between China and the United States, but also in regional struggles over territory and resources.

Andrew Oros examines the evolution of Japanese strategic culture, seeking to answer the question of what future direction Japan's military policies are likely to take in light of historical changes since World War II. Oros devotes particular attention to the actors and conditions that have shaped the ongoing evolution. Drawing on insights from field research, the article explores the potential for changes under conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, including greater attention to strategic cultural strands emphasizing nationalism and assertiveness in a changing security environment. Oros contends that Japanese security policy has actually not evolved as much in recent years as many believe, in part as a function of enduring elements of Japanese strategic culture. Taken together, these arguments challenge traditional explanations of Japanese security behaviour through cultural approaches, from wartime descriptions of fanatical militarists who instigated the Pacific War to post-war descriptions of a ‘pacifist’ security culture.

Renato Cruz De Castro's article on the Philippines stresses the role of the keepers of strategic culture. He focuses on elite strategic preferences and goals, the shared perspectives of about 400 families that dominated Philippine politics and the economy since it became independent in 1946. These keepers, or stewards, have advanced strategic preferences including reluctance to allocate resources for national defence, partiality for asymmetric warfare in confronting military challenges, and a propensity to rely on external powers in addressing strategic challenges. Yet these dynamics have come under dramatic new pressures in the last decade, and De Castro explores a fascinating dialectical relationship between traditional and geostrategic imperatives. This includes an examination of the Aquino administration's efforts to shift the Philippine military's focus and efforts from internal security to territorial defence relative to the persistence of these strategic preferences and goals. De Castro highlights these and other dynamics that impact the scope of possible changes in Philippines security policy.

In his article on strategic culture in the Republic of Korea, Jiyul Kim explores how contemporary geostrategic dilemmas coupled with identity struggles have impacted its foreign and security policy. Indeed, South Korea represents a fascinating case study of the balance between geostrategy and domestic political and cultural lenses. Any security policy reforms must advance cautiously, as the South Korean government seeks a balance between increasing regional bellicosity (especially with its neighbour to the north) and economic and political engagement. This is further complicated by the combination of a societal history, Confucian hierarchy and personality-driven politics, assigning the executive branch a great deal of power and influence in strategic policy formulation and decision making. The government, under new president Park Geun-Hye, is re-energizing relations with the United States and regional security partners and pursuing a concentrated programme of military modernization. At the same time, South Korea's strategic culture appears to be evolving towards greater diplomatic outreach and economic engagement.

Brice Harris explores American strategic culture towards the Asia-Pacific, with critical attention to potential contradictions between American self-definition of its strategic culture – as a vital force for peace, stability, and prosperity in the region – and experiences with actual American engagements in this light. The article highlights how American responses to developments in the region – not the least of which is the economic and military rise of China and the implications for American allies in the region such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea – are mediated through the lens of the American ‘way of war’ and the role of technology in military strategy. Harris concludes that in an era of persistent military conflict and increasing political complexity, the United States will continue to risk strategic failure unless and until she remedies her current strategic ills by fully integrating the intangible human (and, by extension, cultural) dimension into her narrow systems-based concept of military engagement. While achievable, he argues that the Asia pivot helps to bring some of these critical issues to light and foster further debate.

Finally, David Haglund's retrospective article, ‘What Can Strategic Culture Contribute to Our Understanding of Security Policies in the Asia-Pacific Region?’, summarizes some of the major debates in the subfield and critically analyses the potential utility of an ideational lens for understanding recent developments. Haglund takes a surgical approach to this comparative enterprise. He explores issues including contending definitions of strategic culture and the ideational-positivist debate, epistemology, and questions of continuity versus change in Asia-Pacific security policies. Haglund presents an insightful analysis of the implications of a culturalist turn in the security studies literature and identifies new avenues of systematic investigation.

Conclusion

This collection has three goals: to develop profiles of the strategic cultures of important players in the Asia-Pacific region; to link these strategic cultures to security policy responses as complimentary factors that, together with geostrategic challenges and opportunities, may help to further explain states' actions in the past decade; and to summarize and compare strategic cultures and evaluate the relationship between strategic culture and the prospects for regional conflict resolution, broadly conceived.

Regardless of the specific issue, the dovetailing of national strategic culture and regional politics shows through. An anecdote illuminates this complex situation. When President Obama missed the APEC summit in Bali in October 2013, Chinese leaders appeared thrilled at their pre-eminent status at the meeting. One Indonesian business leader in attendance joked that in terms of engagement with the region, it appeared that ‘the United States was playing checkers while the Chinese play chess’.⁸⁹ Yet resolute American support for its allies in territorial disputes coupled with significant new resource commitments to the region might suggest that high-stakes poker is a better analogy.

Regardless of the metaphor of choice, articles in this collection enrich our understanding of the tapestry of material and ideational factors that shape security policies in this region for the 21st century.

Notes

1. ‘Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament’, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 17 November 2011, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament

2. Quoted in Jamil Anderlini, ‘Xi Strikes Strident Tone on Foreign Policy’, Financial Times, 29 January 2013.

3. Desmond Ball, ‘Strategic Culture in the Asia-Pacific Region’, Security Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1993), p. 44.

4. Ibid.; Ken Booth and Russell Trood (eds), Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999).

5. Alan Macmillan, Ken Booth, and Russell Trood, ‘Strategic Culture’, in Booth and Trood, Strategic Cultures (note 4), p. 8.

6. See Andrew Scobell, China's Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Andrew Scobell, David Lai, and Roy Kamphausen, The PLA at Home and Abroad: Assessing the Operational Capabilities of China's Military (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2010); Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes (London: Hurst, 2009).

7. Recent studies include Peter Schmidt and Benjamin Zyla (eds), European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation? Special Issue of Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2011); see also Per M. Norheim-Martinsen, The European Union and Military Force: Governance and Strategy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); William Mirow, Strategic Culture Matters: A Comparison of German and British Military (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2009); Olivier Schmitt, ‘Strategic Users of Culture: German Decisions for Military Action’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2012), pp. 59–81; Peter Schmidt and Benjamin Zyla (eds), European Security Policy and Strategic Culture (New York: Routledge, 2013); Christoph O. Meyer, The Quest for a European Strategic Culture: Changing Norms on Security and Defence in the European Union (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Christoph O. Meyer, ‘Convergence Towards a European Strategic Culture? A Constructivist Framework for Explaining Changing Norms’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2005), pp. 523–49; Paul Cornish and Geoffrey Edwards, ‘Beyond the EU/NATO Dichotomy: The Beginnings of a European Strategic Culture’, International Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 3 (2001), pp. 587–603; Florida International University–US Southern Command, Latin America Strategic Cultures Project, available at strategicculture.fiu.edu.

8. Peter Schmidt and Benjamin Zyla, ‘Introduction: European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation?’, in Schmidt and Zyla, European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation? (note 7), p. 485.

9. Stine Heiselberg, ‘Pacifism or Activism: Towards a Common Strategic Culture within the European Security and Defense Policy?’, IIS Working Paper, 2003; Kerry Longhurst and Marcin Zaborowski, Old Europe, New Europe and the Transatlantic Security Agenda (London: Routledge, 2005); Per Martinsen, ‘Forging a Strategic Culture: Putting Policy into ESDP’, Oxford Journal on Good Governance, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2004), pp. 61–6; Sten Rynning, ‘The European Union: Towards a Strategic Culture?’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 34, No. 4 (2003), p. 481.

10. For more on strategic culture debates, see John Glenn, ‘Realism versus Strategic Culture: Competition and Collaboration?’, International Studies Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (2009), pp. 523–51; Alan Bloomfield, ‘Time to Move On: Reconceptualizing the Strategic Culture Debate’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 33, No. 3 (2012), pp. 437–61; Alan Bloomfield and Kim Richard Nossal, ‘Towards an Explicative Understanding of Strategic Culture: The Cases of Australia and Canada’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2007), pp. 286–307; David Haglund, ‘What Good is Strategic Culture?’, International Journal, Vol. 59, No. 3 (2004), pp. 479–502.

11. Jeffrey S. Lantis and Andrew A. Charlton, ‘Continuity or Change? The Strategic Culture of Australia’, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 30, No. 4 (2011), pp. 611–28; K.P. O'Reilly, ‘A Rogue Doctrine? The Role of Strategic Culture on US Foreign Policy Behavior’, Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2013), pp. 57–77.

12. While a variety of theoretical lenses may be applied to the region, including liberal, ideational/constructivist, cultural, neoclassical realism, and structuralism/neorealism, this study contends that strategic culture may provide added value for understanding the development of security policy behaviours.

13. For authoritative treatments, see Glenn, ‘Realism versus Strategic Culture’ (note 10); Michael C. Desch, ‘Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies’, International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1998), pp. 141–70.

14. Ministry of National Defense, People's Republic of China, White Paper 2013, at http://eng.mod.gov.cn/Video/2013-04/19/content_4443469.htm; Randall L. Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu, ‘After Unipolarity: China's Vision of International Order in an Era of US Decline’, International Security, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2011), pp. 41–72; Randall L. Schweller and Xiaoyu Pu, ‘Emerging Powers in an Age of Disorder’, Global Governance, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2011), pp. 285–97; Ian Hurd, ‘Breaking and Making Norms: American Revisionism and Crises of Legitimacy’, International Politics, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2007), pp. 194–213; Wang Jisi, ‘China's Search for Stability with America’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 5 (2005), pp. 42–50.

15. Robert Gilpin, ‘The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1988), pp. 591, 594–5; see also Robert G. Gilpin, ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); John Mearsheimer, ‘China's Unpeaceful Rise’, Current History, Vol. 105, No. 690 (2006), pp. 160–62.

16. Schweller and Pu, ‘Emerging Powers in an Age of Disorder’ (note 14), p. 285; see also Christopher Layne, ‘The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise’, International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1993), pp. 5–51; John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1990), pp. 5–56.

17. Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, ‘How China Sees America’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 5 (2012), p. 4.

18. President Barack Obama, ‘Remarks to the Australian Parliament,’ reprinted in The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, ‘Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament,’ (Parliament House, November 17, 2011), at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament

19. Kenneth Lieberthal, ‘The American Pivot to Asia’, Foreign Policy (December 21, 2011), at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/21/the_american_pivot_to_asia; see also Michael J. Green and Bates Gill (eds), Asia's New Multilateralism: Cooperation, Competition, and the Search for Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

20. David W. Barno, Nora Bensahel, and Travis Sharp, ‘Pivot but Hedge: A Strategy for Pivoting to Asia while Hedging in the Middle East’, Orbis, Vol. 56, No. 2 (2012), p. 158.

21. See Ralf Emmers, Geopolitics and Maritime Territorial Disputes in East Asia (London: Routledge, 2010); Jian Yang, The Pacific Islands in China's Grand Strategy: Small States, Big Games (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

22. Jane Perlez and Joe Cochrane, ‘Obama's Absence Leaves China as Dominant Force at Asia-Pacific Meeting’, New York Times, 8 October 2013, p. A6.

23. Nathan and Scobell, ‘How China Sees America’ (note 17), p. 31.

24. Xi Jinping, quoted in Perlez and Cochrane, ‘Obama's Absence’ (note 22), p. A6. Neorealism, which has dominated scholarly discourse on recent changes in the Asia-Pacific, frames this as a clear structural transformation away from unipolarity towards multipolarity. See Schweller and Pu, ‘After Unipolarity’ (note 14).

25. See C. Fred Bergsten, ‘A Partnership of Equals: How Washington Should Respond to China's Economic Challenge’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 4 (2008), pp. 57–69; Alastair Iain Johnston, Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980–2000 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Yong Deng, China's Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

26. David Capie, ‘Structures, Shocks and Norm Change: Explaining the Late Rise of Asia's Defence Diplomacy’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2013), pp. 1–26; see also Evan A. Laksmana, ‘Regional Order by Other Means? Examining the Rise of Defense Diplomacy in Southeast Asia’, Asian Security, Vol. 8, No. 3 (2012), pp. 251–70; Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘What (if Anything) Does East Asia Tell Us About International Relations Theory?’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 15 (2012), pp. 53–78; Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (London: Routledge, 2009); Amitav Acharya, ‘Association of Southeast Asian Nations: Security Community or Defense Community?’, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Summer 1991), pp. 159–78; Christopher Hemmer and Peter Katzenstein, ‘Why is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism and the Origins of Multilateralism’, International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 3 (2002), pp. 575–607.

27. Capie, ‘Structures, Shocks, and Norm Change’ (note 26), p. 4.

28. Scholars typically characterize the development of theories of strategic culture through at least three ‘generations’ or waves. These generations have offered refinements of theory and increased methodological sophistication, and important works are recognized in this discussion. The reader will note that this collection employs primarily ‘third generation’ frames to explore strategic culture in the Asia-Pacific, but it is beyond the scope of this study to explore the contours of the theoretical or methodological debates between and among different ‘generations’.

29. See, for example, Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1946); Geoffrey Gorer, The American People (New York: W.W. Norton, 1948).

30. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973); see also Sherry B. Ortner (ed.), The Fate of Culture: Geertz and Beyond (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).

31. Jack Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Nuclear Options, R-2154-AF (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1977), p. 8; see also Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981).

32. Ken Booth, ‘The Concept of Strategic Culture Affirmed’, in Carl Jacobsen (ed.), Strategic Power: USA/USSR (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 121.

33. Colin Gray, ‘National Style in Strategy: The American Example,’ International Security, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1981), p. 35. See also Yitzhak Klein, ‘A Theory of Strategic Culture’, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1991), p. 3; Richard W. Wilson, ‘The Many Voices of Political Culture: Assessing Different Approaches’, World Politics, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2000), pp. 246–73; Richard W. Wilson, Compliance Ideologies: Rethinking Political Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

34. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 1.

35. See, for example, Edward Lock, ‘Refining Strategic Culture: Return of the Second Generation’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2010), pp. 685–708; Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, ‘The Test of Strategic Culture: Germany, Pacifism, and Preemptive Strikes’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2005), pp. 339–59; Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Felix E. Martin and Marvin L. Astrada, Argentine Strategic Culture, Findings Report #9, FIU Applied Research Center Study, April 2010; Glenn, ‘Realism versus Strategic Culture’ (note 10).

36. Valerie Hudson (ed.), Culture and Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 1997), pp. 28–9.

37. O'Reilly, ‘A Rogue Doctrine?’ (note 11), p. 18.

38. Glenn, ‘Realism versus Strategic Culture’ (note 10); see also Porter, Military Orientalism (note 6).

39. This produced Jeannie L. Johnson, Kerry M. Karchner, and Jeffrey A. Larsen (eds), Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Culturally Based Insights into Comparative National Security Policymaking (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

40. Jiyul Kim, Cultural Dimensions of Strategy and Policy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, May 2009), at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=919.

41. See, for example, Abram N. Shulsky, Deterrence Theory and Chinese Behavior (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp. 2000), pp. 38–9.

42. Nina Graeger and Leira Halvard, ‘Norwegian Strategic Culture after World War II: From a Local to a Global Perspective’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 40, No. 1 (2005), pp. 45–66; Henrikki Heikka, ‘Republican Realism: Finnish Strategic Culture in Historical Perspective’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 40, No. 1 (2005), pp. 91–119.

43. Marijke Breuning, ‘Culture, History, Role: Belgian and Dutch Axioms and Foreign Assistance Policy’, in Hudson, Culture and Foreign Policy (note 36), p. 113.

44. Dima Adamsky, Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).

45. John Calvert, ‘The Mythic Foundations of Radical Islam’, Orbis, Vol. 48 (Winter 2004), p. 31.

46. Qouted in Grace Lee, ‘The Political Philosophy of Juche’, Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2003), p. 105.

47. Stuart Poore, ‘Strategic Culture’, in John Glenn, Darryl Howlett, and Stuart Poore (eds), Neorealism versus Strategic Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 63.

48. Nikolaos Ladis, ‘Assessing Greek Strategic Thought and Practice: Insights from the Strategic Culture Approach’, Doctoral dissertation, University of Southampton, 2003.

49. Wilson, Compliance Ideologies (note 33), p. 41.

50. John S. Duffield, ‘Political Culture and State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Neorealism’, International Organization, Vol. 53, No. 4 (1999), pp. 765–803.

51. Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 1.

52. Consuelo Cruz, ‘Identity and Persuasion: How Nations Remember Their Pasts and Make Their Futures’, World Politics, Vol. 52, No. 3 (2000), p. 278.

53. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism (note 51), p. 1; see also Thomas U. Berger, ‘From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan's Culture of Anti-militarism’, International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 119–50.

54. Duffield, ‘Political Culture and State Behavior’ (note 50), p. 771; see also Akan Malici, ‘Germans as Venutians: The Culture of German Foreign Policy Behavior’, Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2006), pp. 37–62.

55. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism (note 51), p. 1.

56. Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 20. For an even more contemporary view, see John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003).

57. Lucian W. Pye, ‘Political Culture’, in David L. Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 218.

58. Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 4.

59. Some of the most influential works in this area for security studies include: Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘Thinking about Strategic Culture’, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1995), pp. 32–64; Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and Military Doctrine’, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1995), pp. 65–93; Harry Eckstein, ‘A Culturalist Theory of Political Change’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 82, No. 3 (1988), pp. 789–804.

60. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (1992), p. 392.

61. Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert O. Keohane, and Stephen Krasner, ‘International Organization and the Study of World Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1998), p. 679.

62. Hudson, Culture and Foreign Policy (note 36), pp. 28–9.

63. See Alister Miskimmon, ‘Continuity in the Face of Upheaval – British Strategic Culture and the Impact of the Blair Government’, European Security, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2004), pp. 273–99.

64. For more perspective on regional cooperation, see Green and Gill, Asia's New Multilateralism (note 19); Steve Chan, Looking for Balance: China, the United States, and Power Balancing in East Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).

65. Green and Gill, Asia's New Multilateralism (note 19), p. 1.

66. See Wu Xinbo, ‘Chinese Perspectives on Building an East Asian Community in the Twenty-first Century’, in Green and Gill, Asia's New Multilateralism (note 19), pp. 55–77; Amy Searight, ‘Emerging Economic Architecture in Asia: Opening or Insulating the Region?’, in Green and Gill, Asia's New Multilateralism (note 19), pp. 193–242; Michael E. O'Hanlon, ‘Defense Issues and Asia's Future Security Architecture’, in Green and Gill, Asia's New Multilateralism, pp. 279–305; Mely Caballero-Anthony, ‘Nontraditional Security and Multilateralism in Asia: Reshaping the Contours of Regional Security Architecture’, in Green and Gill, Asia's New Multilateralism, pp. 306–28.

67. See Per M. Norheim-Martinsen, ‘EU Strategic Culture: When the Means Becomes the End’, in Schmidt and Zyla, European Security Policy: Strategic Culture in Operation? (note 7); Meyer, ‘Convergence Towards a European Strategic Culture?’ (note 7); Norheim-Martinsen, The European Union and Military Force (note 7), pp. 517–534.

68. Cornish and Edwards, ‘Beyond the EU/NATO Dichotomy’ (note 7), p. 587.

69. Meyer, The Quest for a European Strategic Culture (note 7), p. 4.

70. See Capie, ‘Structures, Shocks, and Norm Change’ (note 26).

71. Cornish and Edwards, ‘Beyond the EU/NATO Dichotomy’ (note 7), p. 587.

72. Meyer, ‘Convergence Towards a European Strategic Culture?’ (note 7), p. 525; see also Paul D. Williams, ‘From Non-Intervention to Non-Indifference: The Origins and Development of the African Union's Security Culture’, African Affairs, Vol. 106, No. 423 (2007), pp. 253–79.

73. Ibid.; see also Meyer, The Quest for a European Strategic Culture (note 7).

74. Paul Pierson, ‘Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 2 (2000), p. 252; Margaret R. Somers, ‘“We're No Angels”: Realism, Rational Choice, and Relationality in Social Science’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 104, No. 4 (1998), pp. 722–84; see also Andrew Abbott, ‘From Causes to Events: Notes on Narrative Positivism’, Sociological Methods and Research, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1992), pp. 428–55; John Gerard Ruggie, ‘Peace in Our Time? Causality, Social Facts and Narrative Knowing’, American Society of International Law: Proceedings 89th Annual Meeting (1995), pp. 93–100; and Lawrence Stone, ‘The Revival of the Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History’, Past and Present, Vol. 85, No. 5 (1979), pp. 3–24.

75. Bloomfield and Nossal, ‘Towards an Explicative Understanding’ (note 10), p. 286.

76. Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture (note 31), p. 8.

77. Colin S. Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1999), p. 56.

78. Johnston, Cultural Realism (note 34), p. 256.

79. Alastair Iain Johnson, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 246.

80. Bloomfield, ‘Time to Move On’ (note 10), p. 450.

81. Ibid., p. 451.

82. Christopher P. Twomey, ‘Lacunae in the Study of Culture in International Security’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2008), p. 338.

83. See Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World (New York: Routledge, 2001).

84. Jeffrey S. Lantis, ‘Redefining the Nonproliferation Norm? Australian Uranium, the NPT, and the Global Nuclear Revival’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 57, No. 4 (2011), pp. 543–561; Lantis and Charlton, ‘Continuity or Change?’ (note 11).

85. Twomey, ‘Lacunae in the Study of Culture’ (note 81).

86. Christopher P. Twomey, The Military Lens: Doctrinal Differences, Misperception, and Deterrence Failure (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2008); See Legro, Cooperation Under Fire (note 56); Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

87. David C. Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

88. Bloomfield and Nossal, ‘Towards an Explicative Understanding’ (note 10), pp. 288–9.

89. Perlez and Cochrane, ‘Obama's Absence’ (note 22), p. A6.